he is unlike the other customers. They sense it too, and look at him with hard eyes, eyes like little metal studs pinned into the white faces of young men. In the hush his entrance creates, the excessive courtesy the weary woman behind the counter shows him amplifies his strangeness. He orders coffee quietly and studies the rim of the cup to steady the sliding in his stomach. He had thought, he had read, that from shore to shore all America was the same. He wonders, Is it just these people I’m outside or is it all America?

He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.

“I like the stars. It’s the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they’re always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend…I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don’t last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend…”

False friends, sometimes also called frenemies, are people who pretend to be a friend and then turn out to be just the opposite. These are people who get close to you for the specific reason to make fun of you behind your back, delight in the misery you endure, use you for whatever you can give them, and find out about your life so they can gossip about it later.

Like this:

“All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!”

“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“I want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile. I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don’t want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to be magic.”
― Charles de Lint

“It’s that sense of powerlessness that destroyed my soul. I cannot be as good as I would like to be.nor as bad as I think I need to be. think you have the same doubts that your goodness was not rewarded”
― Paulo Coelho

“Having said that, I must now admit that I was still afraid of human beings, and before I could meet even the customers in the bar I had to fortify myself by gulping down a glass of liquor. The desire to see frightening things—that was what drew me every night to the bar where, like the child who squeezes his pet all the harder when he actually fears it a little, I proclaimed to the customers standing at the bar my drunken, bungling theories of art.”

She had lived a great deal among lies, before plumping for a small life of her own, a sincere and restricted life from which all pretense, even in matters sensual, was banished. How many crazy decisions and allegiances to successive aspects fo the truth! Had she not, one day when her costume for a fancy dress had demanded short hair, cut off the great chestnut mane that fell below her waist when she let it down? ‘I could have hired a wig,’ she thought. ‘I might also, at a pinch, have passed the rest of my life with Becker or Espivant. If it comes to that, I could also have gone on stirring puddings in a saucepan at Carneilhan. The things "one might have done" are, in fact, the things one could not do…”

Colette, Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

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the old proverbial recovery through ancient eyes

SO SORRY ABOUT THE ADS

Just thought I would make a note that Wordpress inserts the ADS on any of us who use their site for free. I have no say in what, where or when they appear. I hope you are able to ignore them. I have my reasons for not paying for the Upgraded Sites but I know the ADS are a right pest and for that, I am sorry.

SILVERBIRD 3: THE SILVER BIRD 3

PADDING OUT MODERN RECOVERY BY USING OLDER AND WISER HEADS.

The images are drawn primarily from my life on the Northern Rivers of NSW, AUSTRALIA with some family input from Other Places and Graphics chosen randomly.
The Wisdoms are collected from all manner of places and include a range of Australian Poetry. Take your Time. Reflect on the Images and the Words. They might be saying more to you than you at first realise.

IZZY FOREAL 18 APRIL 1949 TO 21 JUNE 2014

The man I loved ran into the Forest one morning and never came home. He died beside the Bush Track he loved in Bongil Bongil from a heart attack.
Now for the Old Proverbial Recovery.
LET 'ER RIP, IZZY. LET 'ER RIP.

NEWS OF BOB EARLE

Marc
4/18/2015 — Yes.. I found him. Well. Kind of. News of him anyways. He’s living in Nevada and from what I understand he has suffered some seriously declining health in the past few months. I talked to a friend of his who is in regular contact with him who said he’s in and out of the hospital. I am going to get an address of his friend that I can send a message to Bobby thanking him for all he’s given us/me. I will not post that address. However if people want to send me their note of gratitude I will gladly include it with mine — it in one big envelop to send. Time is of the essence as I will probably send my letter within a couple weeks of the posted date above.
OPR - I will get an address for Marc. Until then, you can post a comment on the page. BOB EARLE